What bothers me most about this is the huge amount of ignorance all sides have on this subject.
The issue IMO, is the fucking AR-15. Police Officers immediately went in when they knew there were problems, but when the subject had an AR-15 that could literally shoot through school walls (ie: Police Officers were outgunned and out-matched), they retreated.
Yes, there was a few hours where they were too scared to do anything, further traumatizing the children / teachers. But this is fucking it. Talk about the firepower and the tactical decision to retreat.
Handguns CANNOT compete against an AR15. The AR15 has superior power, penetration, and accuracy. The officers made the right decision to retreat, regroup, and further come up with a new plan initially. Though their cowardice in the face of the AR15 is what needs to be highlighted most of all.
There’s nothing wrong with being scared of a bigger, more accurate, more powerful gun with more ammunition. If they truly were outgunned, then retreat was the best option (otherwise, officers would have died and that would have forced a retreat while carrying a slain officer around, a much harder task). Shit gets bad to worse in a combat situation if you don’t outgun the opponent.
Dinky handguns won’t do shit against the body armor of the attacker either.
This is literally the case where liberals need to come together, understand the mechanics of the gun involved and push for better gun control laws. If officers in Texas get outgunned and are forced to retreat, then support those officers and push for gun legislation. Everyone knows these bigger guns serve as cop-killers and ultimately fuck our society over. Just quit being dumbass snowflakes about blue-lives-matter or pro-Police stances or whatever.
Being pro-Police here AND anti-gun is the right move in this case. But instead, Liberals fuck over their own politics because they’re too braindead to play their cards right.
Conservatives clearly care more about guns than Police Officers. Punish the Conservative view ya pansies.
The cops had AR15s, body armor, helmets, flash bang grenades, the works. They also outnumbered the shooter 376 to 1. The shooters vest had no armor plating.
https://www.texastribune.org/2022/05/27/uvalde-texas-school-shooting-timeline/
Also note: I’m talking about 11:40am. These are the pre-SWAT police officers who rushed into the building almost immediately after the shooter entered the building.
SWAT doesn’t arrive until 12:10pm.
So no. For the time-period between 11:40am to 12:10pm, Police are just armed with whatever they got. Normal officers don’t go around with Flash Bangs, Body Armor, AR15s. Most officers just have a handgun until SWAT arrives.
Standard procedure literally nationwide is that normal officers are expected to go in with what they have. That’s exactly what happened in Nashville less than a year later:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Nashville_school_shooting
The body cam video is public. Officers responded with what they had. Yes, there’s an officer with an AR. There are also officers clearing rooms with handguns and in plainclothes. And one of the officers that engaged the AR-wielding shooter did so with their duty handgun.
Body Armor, AR15s.
They absolutely wear the former every day and many these days have either an AR or a shotgun in the trunk of their patrol vehicle.
May want to read you own article before posting it…from the article at 11:35, a few minutes after the gunman entered the school…
" Three Uvalde police officers rush to the same door that the gunman used to enter, which was closed. Surveillance footage shows the officers all have pistols, and two of them have rifles. One officer has external armor, and two are wearing concealable armor."
They had armor, pistols and 2/3 had rifles.
This is a tragedy any way you slice it. There is so much gun reform that needs to happen, and police did not handle things well here. People with guns are hard situations to handle, but police handled a bad situation on a way that made it worse.
Cool.
Now take that highly-penetrative AR15 and shoot it into a school building, knowing full well that the bullets will penetrate the walls and kill the people on the other side of the school.
Even when everyone has an AR15, the shooter still has the advantage, because he had the children hostage. There were also questions on whether the school was clear before any potential shootout (see the problem with AR15’s huge amount of penetration: shooting through the attacker and hitting children in another room is a serious concern still even as SWAT arrives).
Even when you give everyone the works, the problem at play here was the AR15 in the hands of the shooter, which required the police to take a step back and rework tactics entirely.
Thinking from the perspective of the cops side will 100% give yall a ton of evidence and logical arguments to fuck up the pro-gun AR15 lobby. Just think damn it.
.223/5.56 will not penetrate a cinder block wall
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3Gp3hbTmXA
Among the tactical officers who responded were members of the Border Patrol’s elite Bortac team but they couldn’t get into the room because of a steel door and cinder block construction, The Wall Street Journal
Also, most cops carry AR15s or a similar rifle in their cop car.
You have spoken in a clear, concise, and convincing manner. Well done! You’ve swayed this person.
And you are of course correct in your implication we need to begin design and production of the AR16 posthaste! A gun that shoot through 3 walls is the clear solution. Well done sir!
But in all seriousness you are correct. A nation littered with mentally unstable morons and high-powered rifles is a potently and predictably tragic way to be.
If the cops can’t figure out how to suppress and flank one guy they should resign.
Cops aren’t warriors.
There’s another bullshit thing we need to get rid of. Cops are NOT swat team. And the idea of a “Warrior-cop” is one of the worst fucking things in our culture right now.
Liberals have been asking cops to stand down and be more kind for the last decade and suddenly in this case, yall are asking them to be militant warriors again.
No. Leave the “warriors” to the SWAT team at best, and I’m not even convinced that SWAT is a good idea for all cities to have. Warrior-cop mentality is one of the worst things going on in this country right now, and I want to speak against it.
Cops aren’t soldiers. They’re supposed to be community members. In other countries, cops don’t even carry guns.
Weird, I want cops to not strangle someone because they may have used a fake bill, or shoot someone because they were called there to help with a mental health crisis, or shoot someone because they busted into the wrong apartment, or to flash bang a baby.
But I suppose that means I want them to be kind to someone actively shooting kids.
Nice straw-man, but if they can’t take the heat they shouldn’t be in the kitchen cooking. Uvalde cops went AWOL while children died and you’re defending the AWOL cops against arguments that we’re not making while lumping us all in as flip flopping liberals. Surprised some people know how the government works? They weren’t anywhere close to war and guess what, war is worse. They wouldn’t just stand there, they would run away.
The exact reason why the police refused to engage with the uvalde shooter is precisely because they spend every waking moment fantasizing about being Rambo and then they can’t handle the adrenaline when there’s actual lead in the air. They let the kids catch it all instead. These aren’t men we’re talking about anymore.
They aren’t cops either if they dont have regular training in tactics and law and regulations.
This is one of the dumbest takes i have ever read on this site and that is saying something. I really hope you can go through some introspection and have a paradigm shift. Its not easy to change but goddamn. I sincerely hope youre just an ignorant kid.
The fact that you can’t respond to OPs points speaks volumes. It is fine if you don’t like the conclusion, but you won’t convince anyone of anything if you are unable to form rebuttals to their points.
The takes are completely dumbass and abhorrent. They shouldn’t get a response.
No you.
The gunman enters the school at 11:35am. Pre-SWAT officers charge after the gunman almost immediately afterwards. Initial skirmishes between the Police (with only handguns) immediately show that they were outgunned. Officers ask for SWAT team backup by 11:40am.
Read the fucking report.
There is zero reason to be pro-police here.
And who gives a fuck about the weapon used. That does not excuse their lack of action.
Rightists always have such misguided takes.
The people defending the police here are literally saying that the children should fend for themselves in situations like this because it’s too dangerous for the police.
Fuck. That. Noise.
The thin yellow line, everyone. Laugh and point whenever you see the blue stripe on the American flag. It’s a joke.
Would you rush in to suicide yourself if you knew that it wouldn’t help anything?
Some of the parents whose children were being slaughtered were willing to try while police stood around scrolling Facebook on their phone, but police arrested them for it.
Yes.
I would do something, not sit around worrying about my own arse while children are being killed.
And who gives a fuck about the weapon used. That does not excuse their lack of action.
Pistols don’t beat AR15 rifles. If the opponent outguns you, you need to wait for backup and bigger guns. Basic tactics.
And if everyone is using big guns during a hostage situation, the “Good Guys” have a huge disadvantage due to the penetrative effects of powerful guns. Good Guys don’t want to kill children with missed (or even hit) shots. A headshot vs the shooter would not only penetrate the shooter’s skull, but also the wall behind the shooter. A wall that you’re not sure if the children or the teachers of the school were hiding behind yet.
Pistols don’t beat AR15 rifles. If the opponent outguns you, you need to wait for backup and bigger guns.
Why is that? Does the AR15 generate a forcefield around the person wielding it making the shooter immune to any “lesser” weapons? Catching a bullet from a pistol will kill you just the same and this shooter was severely outnumbered. What police lacked was the guts to actually put their lives on the line to protect these children, even though they love to talk about how they put their lives on the line every day as they arrest people for weed or hand out tickets for going 5MPH over the speed limit.
Pistols don’t beat AR15 rifles. If the opponent outguns you, you need to wait for backup and bigger guns. Basic tactics.
This doctrine has been out of standard practice for over two decades. In response to Columbine the new mass adopted doctrine is go towards the gun fire. This is information any officer who has joined in the past ~25 years would have been taught.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/15/us/florida-school-shooting-columbine-lessons/index.html
There’s nothing wrong with being scared of a bigger, more accurate, more powerful gun with more ammunition. If they truly were outgunned, then retreat was the best option (otherwise, officers would have died and that would have forced a retreat while carrying a slain officer around, a much harder task). Shit gets bad to worse in a combat situation if you don’t outgun the opponent.
Go to war? We can’t do that, the other side have guns!
Soldier/Warrior-cop mentality is fucking toxic bro. I don’t accept it from conservatives, and I certainly don’t accept it from the hypocritical liberals who talk both sides on this issue.
At least the conservatives are consistent with the warrior-cop mentality and do what they believe in.
Go to war?
Cops don’t go to war. In most cases, cops deal with rowdy teenagers or people running naked across school property or other such more typical day-to-day cases. They aren’t (and shouldn’t) be equipped to deal with armed shooters.
Cops who study warrior / soldier mentality become too mean, gain the us-vs-them mentality and fuck shit up. Its one of the biggest problems in our country, and I outright refuse anyone who makes war-analogies to cop situations.
At least the conservatives are consistent with the warrior-cop mentality and do what they believe in.
Looks like my comment flew right over your head if you went ahead and posted this unironically — unless you believe the people, and especially the police, of Uvalde, Texas are bleeding-heart liberals.
Police have all the tools in the world there is no excuse for their lack of action while children are being killed.
No they don’t and Cops shouldn’t have those tools.
I’d be far more comfortable if in these cases of national emergency, the National Guard showed up with actual heavy weapon experience and training. SWAT is a decent compromise (a few units of specialized / highly trained cops). But we should not make the “typical” cop go down the journey towards warrior / soldier.
If the typical cop can’t be expected to uphold their duty to protect and serve then they don’t need to be a cop. I do not care if American courts have suddenly decided that the oath and slogan used my police for decades is not binding.
They don’t need bigger or better weapons, they need brains. They had access to cameras in the building. They knew and could have tracked the gunman using those. Set up around two corners near them, team 1 supresses to distract then team two takes out the gunman. Deploying the national guard would take too long, and not all cities have a swat team.
If “typical” cops aren’t expected to risk their safety, then I expect them to take a “typical” paycut. Actually maybe that’s what should happen. Separate real police and law enforcement. Real police get firearms and responsibilities, law enforcement can worry about tickets and fines.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/5.56×45mm_NATO#
“There has been much debate of the allegedly poor performance of the bullet on target in regard to stopping power, lethality, and range. Some of this criticism has been used to advocate an intermediate-sized cartridge between the 5.56 and 7.62 NATO sizes.”
The AR15 is typically chambered in .556, a medium sized cartridge typically pretty lacking in stopping power especially when compared to other popular firearms like the M1 Garand chambered in 30-06 much actually does penetrate much further that .556
